


Alters When It Alteration Finds

by toujours_nigel



Series: Stepping Out [1]
Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 19:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/422606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It got to a point where I threw up my job and spent a couple of months looking for something ashore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alters When It Alteration Finds

Somewhere between sleep and waking, he turned to find absent the warm skin that should have met his in close embrace. Ralph was sitting at the foot of the bed, his knees drawn up and arms around them, drawn physically into himself while his eyes stared unseeing into the dark. Moonlight filtering through the blinds caught in his hair, and his eyes, when he turned, were glitteringly cold in his shadowed face. Alec, catching his breath, thought helplessly that he might as well give in and try his hand at sonnets, if he’d started thinking of Ralph in so effusive a manner.

“I met Harrison this morning; he’s arranged that I should meet the owner day after tomorrow; they should be able to offer me the job.”

Alec, stumbling from sleep, grasped only that something was being said of greater importance by far than simply news of employment. “That’s good, surely.”

“I thought so,” Ralph said, voice rich with an amusement that seemed too-natural. “I rushed home to tell you.” 

They had been apart a good few months, this time; Ralph’s presence in the flat had quite driven from his mind things he remembered now with a sick unease. “Oh, my dear.”

“I can’t think whether I was more shocked, or he.” He shrugged easily, only the tight mouth giving the lie to his easy voice—already he’d assumed a looser posture. “He couldn’t leave fast enough.”

“Ralph.” A pity he was sitting so far away, one could hardly scramble closer, now.

“I would’ve cleared out myself, but I wanted to say goodbye, at least. Presumptuous, perhaps.”

“You knew.” It sounded ridiculous, and ridiculously defensive—but true, for all that, that Ralph had known, that he had agreed, that they both had. And he’d never seemed the sort to be absurdly jealous.

“It isn’t,” he said now, “that I expected you to have nobody else. I’d have been a greater fool than I am, to think so, with us. It’s only...” Only, thought Alec, entirely awake and entirely enlightened, that he had come home to Alec, and found a stranger settled in and laying claim.

“I hadn’t known,” he started—hadn’t known he’d be here, hadn’t known you’d return, hadn’t known I’d be at hospital—and stopped. None of it would answer, after all; he’d known, or ought have known, how Ralph would hate it. “I’m glad you didn’t go,” he said instead, happy to at least have one absolute truth to offer.

“I owed you that, at least. And then,” Ralph smiled, past caring what his face showed, “I missed you, my dear.” Enough to stay in his rooms after seeing David out, and enough for the nearly violent affection that had struck him, even at the time, as wildly different from Ralph’s usual control. What a misery he’d made of things. To say he’d missed Ralph would sound the merest frivolity, now, and yet he could not have missed that David had his fair colouring, and his eyes. What a bloody misery.

“Must you leave?” It was somewhat better than a plaintive ‘don’t go’, though he might as well have said it outright, to judge by Ralph’s charming, rueful smile, and the way he came back and settled an arm around his waist, pulling him close. He set his forehead to the ridge of Ralph’s collar-bone, and waited, their hearts sounding in his ear in arrhythmic counterpoint.

Ralph laughed, his hand stilling a moment before continuing to stroke in broad, soothing circles that made him feel unwillingly calmed—like a child cosily tucked in by his mother, regardless of all complaints. After a time, Ralph said, “It wouldn’t do, Alec.”

He tightened his own grip on Ralph—one last defiance to the inevitable—and murmured agreement.


End file.
